HER STORY

I think people often wonder how adults can become addicts and in trouble with the law.

A story about a young girl I had done an assessment on and later met again at a homeless shelter for teens may shed some light on how these adults often did not have a good beginning.

This young girl, all of the age 12, called me on the crisis hotline. She said she was afraid she had done something bad and was afraid. I asked if she was okay. ‘I think so, right now.’ She said in a quiet voice. I asked if anyone else was home. She said that her mother had just left for work and she was alone in the house.

There was a small moment of silence where I cold hear her quietly sobbing. I asked what was troubling her so much. ‘I’m a cutter, see. And I think I went a bit too deep this time.’ I asked why she didn’t tell her mother. More silence. I asked if she was still bleeding. She said yes. I asked how her mother didn’t see her. ‘I had my covers pulled up tight when she came into my bedroom. I’m afraid there is a lot of blood now.’

I told her I was calling 911 and her mom. The ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital. Her mom decided to meet her daughter at the hospital. I arrived in time to see the girl and her mother in the room. As I approached, I saw the mother was on the phone. ‘I can’t believe this little bitch did this to me!’ She yelled into the phone. Her daughter looed at me then her mom with tears running like rivers down her cheeks.

Talking to the doctor that treated her, he told me she had over 100 superficial cuts on her body. Wherever she could reach was cut. She had cut her arm so deep she had almost reached the bone. The cut was on the top of her arm. The doctor said if she had cut on the bottom, the outcome would have been tragic.

About a year later I was called to the Emergency room to assess a young girl who had taken a bottle of pain meds. Upon entering te room I saw the same girl again. Her mother was visibly angry, yelling at her for screwing up her life and her prospects of finding a man. The doctor had given the girl a charcoal treatment. She was vomiting black as streams of charcoal exited her nose also, her dark mascara was running down her eyes.

The young girl was no longer the innocent kid I first met. Her Britney Spears poster I had seen in her room had been replaced by a Korn T-shirt and she had adopted the gothic look many kids were wearing. I tried to talk with her mother about their issues. She stated she just wanted her daughter out of the house. The girl was actually more approachable. We talked about music and what she wanted to be when she grew up. I offered my contact information, but never heard from them again. Until…

As a Crisis Clinician, I was assigned to work at the local homeless shelter program for teens in Bangor, Maine. One afternoon I was working in the shelter when the doorbell rang. Standing outside was a more grown up girl, a bit more rougher around the edges, but with the same smile I remembered from our conversation. She had been homeless for about six months, living from apartment to apartment with other kids, doing a variety of drugs and getting money wherever she could.

There is always a back-story to the person you see on the streets. Usually tragic and sad, they have much to tell, if anyone would listen.